Lange Nacht der Wissenschaft:

The University of Stuttgart had an interesting event on Friday night, which translated directly is "long night of Science." It's basically an open house where all the labs are open late into the night showing off their cool stuff. The university is very applied, so there was plenty of interesting stuff to see. One was a model-scale wind tunnel in action (complete with smoke wand testing of a model). They have a world class full size wind tunnel, but it was in top secret mode because an unnamed car company was doing testing at the time.

Small wind tunnel at Uni Stuttgart

Also of interest was a huge (!!!) laser shining from the tall physics building. After dark, they pointed it the local Max Planck Instutute, well over a mile away. It made a huge green dot and could be easily traced all the way there through the atmosphere. (I don't suppose this was any sort of warfare since the scientists at Max Planck did not retaliate.) The line came nearby my apartment and it was incredibly erie to have a perfectly straight green line sticking through the night nearby.


Target of huge laser in the night from my balcony (No photoshop - it was that bright!)

There was plenty of other interesting stuff to see, especially in the large automotive department, but its not necessary to go into detail. It was a fun evening to just see what kind of stuff is going on in a German university.